Before us, as we turned on reaching the brow of the hill, stood the holy city of Russia, its ancient capital, the border city between the Eastern and the Western worlds! The sun unclouded and intensely glowing is behind us, and shedding its golden radiance in floods upon the domes and pinnacles of three hundred and seventy churches, countless towers and roofs and walls, the Kremlin standing above the rest in its majesty, with its crown of cathedrals and palace, a constellation of splendor rarely equalled in the cities of the world. The river makes a circular sweep through the plain at our feet, and then flows through the city. It was June, 1812, when Napoleon, at the head of the French army, crossed the Niemen and pushed on to Wilna, from which the Russian army retired, drawing him on in pursuit, and, with masterly foresight, involving their enemy in more and more hopeless difficulties. Napoleon would have been glad to meet the Russians in signal battle, but the leader of the Russians understood his ground too well to risk an engagement. The Emperor Alexander, however, had not the sagacity to perceive nor the patience to bear the policy of his general, and, displacing him, put another man in his place, who gave battle at Borodino on the first day of September, when 80,000 men were killed or wounded, and the Russians retired to Moscow. The French were sadly crippled by the losses in this battle, and their provisions were now nearly exhausted. They were hastening on to the capture of Moscow to save their own lives. On the 12th of September the Russian army silently marched out of the city, carrying with them every thing that could be removed. Of three hundred thousand inhabitants, only the convicts and a few others remained to take the chances of war.